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The Ottomans in the seventeenth century ruled a vast empire that encompassed the Balkans, modern day Turkey and much of the Middle East. They had captured Byzantium in 1453 and ended the Byzantine Empire. Successive Sultans had launched repeated attacks or ''jihads'' on the Christian kingdoms of Europe for many centuries. By the 1680s the main defense against the Ottomans was the Hapsburg Empire<ref>Alan Palmer, The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (New York, Barnes & Noble Publishing, 1992), p. 113</ref>. This was a large empire that was centered on the German-speaking lands of modern Austria and its capital was Vienna. The Hapsburg Empire and the Ottomans had long contested the control of central Europe and for the control of Hungary.  In 1529 the Ottomans had laid siege to Vienna but had been beaten back. This has also led to the partition of Hungary between the Turks and the Hapsburgs. However, the Catholic Hapsburgs distrusted and occasionally persecuted many of their Hungarian subjects who were Protestants <ref> Palmer, p. 113</ref>. The Catholic forces moved into an area of Hungary that had been a de facto buffer zone between the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. This gave the Ottomans the excuse that they had long wanted to drive their armies into the heart of Europe. Since the death of Suleiman, the Magnificent the Ottomans had been in decline, but this had been reversed by a series of energetic Viziers. They had reformed the army and had built up the infrastructure of the Empire. The Hapsburg intervention into Hungary was the perfect opportunity for the Turks to capture Vienna. They wanted the city so that they could control vital land trade routes and to potentially fatefully weaken the Hapsburgs.